1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to an apparatus and method for monitoring environmental conditions in a computing device.
2. Description of Related Art
As computing devices become more complex and run at greater speeds, environmental sensors are increasingly being used to monitor the environmental conditions of the computer components so that catastrophic failure conditions can be avoided. For example, temperature sensors are increasingly being used in association with processors and motherboards in order to determine when temperature levels of the processors exceed a threshold. Once the threshold is exceeded, various cooling devices may be employed to reduce the temperature back down to a safe level.
Typically, these environmental sensors report measured values to a controller when the measured value meets a predetermined fixed reporting threshold. For example, a temperature sensor may report a measured temperature value to the controller only when the temperature has increased by five degrees Celsius or more. Similarly, an revolutions per minute (RPM) sensor on a system fan may report sensed values when the RPMs of the system fan change by 100 RPM or more.
However, with the known environmental sensor systems, a constant eye must be kept on the environmental sensors at all times in order to determine if the environmental conditions exceed a reporting threshold. That is, for every processing cycle, the processor must check of the environmental sensors to determine if any of the sensed values exceed reporting thresholds. If so, the sensed value is reported to the controller which performs appropriate corrective action if the sensed value exceeds a predetermined threshold.
Monitoring the environmental sensors at all times is expensive in terms of processing time in that processing cycles are lost to making determinations of whether or not environmental conditions have changed by a predetermined fixed reporting threshold. Thus, it would be beneficial to have an apparatus and method for monitoring environmental conditions of a computing device in which constant monitoring of the sensed conditions by the processor is not required.
The present invention provides an apparatus and method for monitoring environmental conditions in a computing device. The apparatus and method of the present invention provide for exponentially increasing or decreasing the awareness of the processor to the state of the environmental sensors in the computing device.
In the present invention, after collecting the initial value of each environmental sensor, the processor calculates the difference between the current value and the next warning/critical level value. The processor instructs an environmental sensor controller to report new sensor measurements only when the sensed value changes by at least a half of the difference between the current value and the next warning/critical level value. Upon receipt of a new sensor value from the environmental sensor controller, the processor will adjust the reporting threshold by re-calculating the difference between the current sensed value and the next warning/critical level value.
This process of reporting threshold adjustment will continue until the sensor value is within a danger zone. Once the sensor value is within the danger zone, the processor will set the reporting threshold to a minimum allowed for the particular environmental sensor type (one degree Celsius for a temperature sensor, for example). In this way, the processor is provided with the highest level of awareness only when the sensed value is within the danger zone. In so doing, processing cycles that would have been lost to maintaining high alertness at all times, as in the known systems, are reclaimed and more processing power is thereby harnessed.